I am not a portuguese expert, but I have lived in Brazil for 2 years and have completed language school. Let me say, loudly, ANDAR IS NOT TO WALK!! Andar has the English sense of the verb "to move" To walk in Portuguese is ANDAR DE PE. Many Brazilians say "andar" as walk because the context is clear, but this is confusing to English speakers if you learn that andar = walk. You can "andar de carro, andar de aviao, andar de moto, etc." This is not a dictionary definition, but if you remember this as an English speaker it will help a lot!

Like I was saying above. If you are a native English speaker and you tell me that "Andar" is to walk then the first time someone says "andar de avião" no native English speaking person would every understand this. That is why I am explaining that translating "andar" as walk is a very good and accurate translation to English. However, if an American is learning Portuguese they need to understand that "andar" can mean walk 50% of the time but "andar de pé" is always walk 100% of the time. It is much easier to make the mental reference that "andar" is referencing some sort of movement of your person whether by foot, by car, by bicycle, by plane, by ship. They all work in Portuguese.

I looked up going for a drive and supposedly that can also be 'vou dar uma volta'? It can also mean things like I’ll look around, I’ll give it a try? It seems to be a bit more of an ambiguous phrase than going for a walk is, which is very specific.

When you say I’m going for something, is it usually dar instead of for?

We would never use dwelling in that way, but it nearly always means brooding, most commonly heard as in, 'don't dwell on it' or 'stop dwelling on your problems' when something bad has happened. 'He dwelt so much on his mistakes, that he gave up languages and took up juggling instead.'

Dwell can also mean live (as in live somewhere) and a dwelling is a home, but they're quaint terms and aren't part of everyday speech.

100% true Dan, but more commonly people would say "Eu vou passear um pouco." or "Eu vou caminhar um pouco. Like we would use the thought of "I will go for a stroll." Many times if I say, "I vou andar." Many times Brazilians will say "andar de pe?" or andar de carro?" "Vou andar" is not specific and Brazilian Portuguese tends to be very specific. I am not saying that it is not understood and common.

Okay Dan, I wont argue with you. I just had a Brazilian friend confirm exactly what I am saying as correct. You may be a Brazilian and that is fine Regions and areas are different. The question above was, "If an American says, 'I am going for a walk...' they mean a stroll, which by your definition would be "passear." That is why you had to add "um pouco" to "Vou andar um pouco" to carry the sense of going for a stroll. You are very smart and your answers are always a big help to me. Thank you for your hard work.

But wouldn't this mean more "I had BECOME sad" than "I had been sad"? When 'andar' is used, my experience is that it's generally describing a change/transformation, just like you would say in English "He had gone mad", "his face went red" etc.

Duo is not accepting "become", but insisting on "to be", which I think is wrong.

What "andar" adds to the sentence is not the idea of a transformation, but that of a lasting state. Take these two examples: "Eu estou distraído" = "I'm distracted". "Eu ando distraído (ultimamente)" = I have been distracted (lately). Where Portuguese changes the verb, English changes the verb tense. Curious, right?

Thanks, Carolind! I have obviously misunderstood, then, so good to be corrected. (I though 'Eu ando distraído' meant "I become distracted".)

Davu's questions are indeed interesting -- since the (indicative) present of 'andar' actually makes the sentence mean something in the perfect past, I think this just about added another level of confusion to my Portuguese studies...

In English, no. Whereas "alone" can be an adverb and "walk alone" is fine, "sad" is an adjective and doesn't really work and you'd probably need to write "walk sadly" whatever that means, possibly "walk feeling sad".

Well, "walking sad" does sound poetic, to say the least, but technically, it's not that much of a stretch. We do have this expression where "walking around" takes on the meaning of "going about one's business". Ex: "He has been walking around shirtless for hours and nobody told him to get dressed." So why not: I have been walking around sad for days. It's unusual, and there are better ways to express this, but I think people would understand.